Monday, June 4, 2007

"......These are the dog days of the War Party; their cadre is deserting them in droves, the public hates their guts, and members of their own party – I refer, of course, to the Republican Party – are rising in rebellion, if only out of fear of the public's wrath. The investigation into their shenanigans has hardly begun with the indictment and conviction of Scooter Libby, and the prospect of jail time for a few more of the War Party's leading figures cannot fill them with anything other than trepidation. The American people are waking up, and their awakening has been rude in the extreme and is bound to get ruder with each passing day as the "surge" yields a higher casualty rate and the Iraqi insurgency plays havoc with our pretensions to being the New Rome.

Yet the War Party still has a few cards to play. The trump card is held by the president of the United States, who is, sadly, the commander in chief and has the power – ceded to him by a complacent and complicit Congress – to launch a war on his own authority. George W. Bush could, at any moment, launch an attack on Iran that would spark a regional war – the consequences of which would be unimaginably grave, not only for the peoples of the Middle East but for Americans as well. Whether he is… unbalanced enough to do it depends, one supposes, on many factors, one of which is the personality of a man who seems, at times, to be not quite in control of his own presidency. It also depends on the amount of pressure that the War Party can exert......."